The Grand Design
by Vorneniel
Summary: (rating will change later)The fellowship is at it again!A new mission and some new friends from Eryn Vorn
1. Intro new characters

I do not own Lord of the Rings and did not create the Elves or the song this story was named after ,but certain characters ARE mine. In the extremely unlikely, but in the event some body wants to use them, you need but ask, though try not to make them a little OOC. Enough of this necessary evil, Let us begin!  
  
Into The West  
  
"And all will turn to silver glass,  
  
A light on the water  
  
Grey ships pass  
  
Into the west."  
  
Vorneniel sang softly to the elflings that lay scattered about her, indeed only sleeping. Their eyes, usually so full of the fiery spirit they reflected, were dulled looking into the heavens without seeing the midday sun burning so brightly above. "Sweet sleep, my little ones." She whispered, gazing fondly at her beloved charges, gently rubbing the back of one that lay across her lap. 'So young, so innocent, not knowing how much their elders go through to keep them safe.' The warrior-in-training thought before letting go to join the children in their slumber.  
  
It was not long until she was drawn forth from the beloved haven of her mind. Someone had chucked an acorn at her. Her eyes came back into focus reluctantly and she groaned, knowing why she had been woken up. Carefully shifting the sweet elflings that had curled next to and on her, so she could rise. It was then when she saw who had done the waking, it was her older sister, Meaglien who was name for her wit and tongue.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Maeglien ask quietly, carefully picking her way through the sleeping forms that were scattered throughout the grove of young oaks. "I thought your friend Arathel was on Duty today." Setting the younger children down for a nap was a job shared by all the elfmaids and unmarried women of Eryn Vorn, also called the Black Forest, who affectionately referred to the chore as The Duty.  
  
"She did, but she needed help today. Her foul mood was sensed by the elflings, who refused to sleep without a song. She ask me to take her Duty, and I did." Vorn finished before her sister started a rant about how she, Vorn, should not be doing something that was someone else's responsibility. She had heard enough of those as a child. Seeing the look upon her sister's face, she smiled apologetically and gave her sister a hug. "I love you." she whispered into her sister's thick dark brown hair. She pulled away quickly and walked off into the trees, where she came across the sleeping form of the one she sought, Arathel.  
  
"Wake up." Vorn cooed softly, checking that her friend was really sleeping before tiptoeing off to the nearby creek, a mischievous grin plastered on her face. Had Arathel been awake, she would have been very, very worried.   
  
Vorn took an empty wineskin off of her belt and filled in the newly thawed stream. 'This should wake her thoroughly.' Vorn could barely keep herself from laughing as she approached her slumbering friend. Grabbing the bottom of the skin, she overturned it quickly and squeezed. The resulting wave was enough to wake a dwarf, and Vorn had to quickly clap her hand over her friends mouth to keep her from crying out and waking the elflings not too far away. Arathel's dark eyes darted around madly until they spotted Vorn, then she relaxed somewhat and Vorn took her hand away. She then started to shiver from the cold.  
  
"You are heartless, did you know that?" Arathel said, standing up and clearing the water off her pale face. She smiled softly to show her friend that she was joking, then proceeded to wring her hair out in attempt to dry it quickly.  
  
"Are you forgetting something, O Lady Pale? I took over your Duty for you, you would have owed me something anyway!"  
  
"Are you saying that that satisfaction of dousing me with freezing cold water is enough payment for begging a favor of my dearest friend" Arathel tried her best to look innocent, sweet, and hurt at the same time. The result was so heartrending, like the look you would get from a beaten puppy, it was too much for Vorn. She quickly gave her friend a comforting hug, falling right into Arathel's trap. She quickly found the sensitive spot in Vorn's side and began to tickle, viciously.   
  
"No, no! Please stop!" It was all Vorn could do to keep from screaming it for the whole forest to hear. She was quite helpless, writhing on the forest floor as Arathel continued her relentless assault.  
  
"What was that? Do you wish for me to stop?" Arathel could only laugh as Vorn's head barely managed to bob up and down. "I take it that means 'yes'." Again Vorn's head bobbed. This is almost too easy... .Arathel thought. "Well, too bad!"   
  
This torture lasted a few more minutes until Arathel grew bored with it.  
  
"All right, I'll let you off lightly this time."  
  
"That was 'light'? I consider myself lucky indeed! Ai, you got me wet as well!" Vorn said, scrambling up. After dusting herself off, Vorn started to walk alongside the large creek and Arathel was forced to follow.  
  
They walked in silence for a good while, until she whispered out of the side of her mouth, her voice almost lost on the breeze, "Don't look, but I believe we have company." They went a few steps further, when Arathel "stopped to casually stretch".  
  
Arathel whispered back, her tone as equally light as Vorn's had been, "You're right. One of our comrades, in the rowan behind to the left."  
  
They walked on, trying to discern who their "stalker" was by the lightness of his step. They were not having much success, Arathel snorted in impatience.  
  
"Such a sound is not becoming of such a young beauty." A soft voice floated from above. The person was now in a younger oak, perched on a branch almost directly above them.  
  
"Should we look, or keep on walking?" Vorn ask, intentionally raising her voice so that the figure in the oak could hear her, trying to make her voice sound annoyed and failing miserably.  
  
"Hmm...I think we should look. If not, he would just follow us until we did." Arathel was having as much trouble, if not more trouble, than Vorn with masking the delight she truly felt.  
  
"What do you think he wants?"  
  
With that, he figure leapt out of the tree.  
  
well, what do you think?constructive criticisim is welcome and flames are tolerated 


	2. setting up the stage

Disclaimer- I'm too tired, look at previous entry  
  
Into the West  
  
He landed lightly on his feet; much like a cat would, and dusted himself off nonchalantly as if to show that a twenty foot drop wasn't a big deal.  
  
"Morgaya! What orc tunnel did you crawl out from?" Arathel exclaimed as she and Vorn rushed forward to greet their deeply missed comrade in arms. He had left Eryn Vorn a while ago, with a group of younger Rangers who came quite often to visit.  
  
The hospitality of the Elves of Eryn Vorn towards the race of Men was second only to that of Rivendell, and not by much. The only reason it had been forgotten was, aside from those few Rangers, no one knew that any decent race had been left alive after the Great Plague.  
  
"Quite a few, actually. And none that I would care to remember." Morgaya shrugged off the question, his face suddenly fairly sad. He gave each of the girls in turn, and by the time they were done he had gotten his expression under control again.  
  
"What happened?" Arathel in particular looked concerned, Vorn noted with some amusement, not saying that Vorn was not just as curious.  
  
"You'll find out at dinner." And he refused to say anything else on the matter, instead he asked what they had been doing since he had left.  
  
"Oh, not much really. It has been frightfully dull without you about to stir things up. Arathel has had to be the trouble causer, but she needs a bit more practice before she is in your league. Vorn said with a huge grin.  
  
"Our league, "Morgaya amended her, 'I heard about some trouble in particular that caused quite a stir, and, oddly enough, I heard you were the one who had started it." Vorn winced at the way Morgaya emphasized the word 'you' ."Don't look so abashed, you should be proud to be among the ranks of the Watched Ones." Morgaya said, throwing his arm around Vorn's shoulders.  
  
"The 'Watched ones'?" Arathel ask skeptically, moving to Gaya's other side.  
  
"Yes," he started, throwing his other arm around Arathel, who looked pleasantly suprised," it is a term us innocents have given ourselves. For some reason the Elders are always keeping an eye on us, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why." Morgaya was trying to look as innocent as a sleeping child. This only set the friends off in a new bout of laughter and Morgaya had the decency to blush. They continued on like this, walking, talking and laughing until they had reached the creek again. Then, without a word, the women shoved Morgaya in, catching him completely by surprise.  
  
The stream swept him down a few yards before he was able to right himself, he broke the surface laughing.  
  
"In Lothlorien, elfmaids did not push their warriors into the Nimrodel." He said without a hint of annoyance in his fair voice.  
  
"I do not see any relevance." Vorn began, picking her words carefully, "We are not in Lorien, that in not the Nimrodel, and Arathel is not an elf maiden. Besides, we're all warriors here." Vorn had to say the last part rather quickly, considering Arathel had started to lunge at her. Arathel gave up quickly; she was more built for speed and tired faster than Vorn who had good endurance.  
  
"What are you implying, if you think I am not an elf?" Arathel ask, looking rather intimidating with her hands on her hips, and her eyes narrowed to a point of nonexistence. Try as he might, Morgaya could not keep himself from laughing uproariously at the situation.  
  
"You two fight like and old married pair of halflings!" He managed to calm down enough to say as he waded out of the stream, wringing his long auburn hair.  
  
"You went to the Shire?" Their argument immediately forgotten, having gotten Morgaya to talk of his ventures.  
  
"I went to a few places, actually. But yes, the Shire was one of them." He added hastily, seeing the impatient look on his friend's faces. "I left with the last group of Rangers that passed through here, so we eventually found our way to the Paths of the dead." Vorn and Arathel were more than a little surprised.  
  
"You passed through the paths? What drove you to do such a thing?"  
  
"It is a long story, and one that I will not wish to relate for a long while. In that light, I bid you farewell, I must find the other's that I was traveling with." With that, he hugged both of his friends and climbed back into the trees. Walking from branch to branch was the easiest way to travel in Eryn Vorn, up there very few things could find their way to kill you.  
  
The women watched and listened until Morgaya was out of sight and earshot, then looked at each other, envy dancing in their eyes.  
  
"To think, he has been to dozens of places that we have only dreamed about! If I were him, I would be bursting at the seams to tell everyone I know about my journey." Arathel sighed, wishing that she did have memories like that to share.  
  
"I wish we knew more of what is going on, more than just 'Mordor was destroyed', nay?" Vorn closed her eyes, willing some vision to come to her.  
  
"My friend, your curiosity will be the death of you someday. By the Valar, you don't need to know all that goes on in the world, leave that to Lady Galadriel." She skipped off a short way and called back over her shoulder, "Come, or else we will be late for Weapons Training!" She started off again, failing to notice one crucial thing.  
  
"ARATHEL!" Vorn had to yell rather loudly, Arathel was disappearing quickly, "ARE YOU PLANNING TO GO DRESSED IN THAT?!" She was referring to the leisure dresses worn by them both. Arathel stopped to look down at herself, then realized what Vorn had been talking about. She gasped and ran back to Vorn and the pair of them back to Vorn's talan.  
  
"Um... Vorn? Do you think I could borrow one of your practice tunics? I forgot to hang mine up to dry, it will be completely soaked..." Arathel said somewhat sheepishly, looking everywhere but Vorn's face.  
  
"Oh Arathel, you forget almost everything." Vorn scolded softly, "Don't worry, you can wear my sister's old clothes, she hasn't worn them since she started taining as a healer. By the way, you forgot to take your weapons home the last time we stayed here after Ascar put us through Udun." Vorn climbed up the natural ladder formed by the branches of the oak her talan had been built in.  
  
"Thank you!" Arathel cried, grasping the lowest branch and pulling herself up after Vorn.  
  
It only took a matter of minutes for them both to don the said attire, so all they had to do was grab their weapons and then they were off. They jumped off the side of the talan and hit the ground running. Along the way, Arathel had a thought.  
  
"By the Valar, we had better hope Ascar will not be running the training today!" She pulled in front of Vorn and started running backward. Vorn rolled her eyes, 'Shoowoff'.  
  
"I know what you mean, I can just imagine what would happen; 'Late again! Ten hours running, no lagging, and nothing slower than a jog. Remember I will be watching, not get with the others, I expect you both to be working harder than any of them!'. What a nightmare that would be!"  
  
It was not long after that they reached the enormous clearing where Training was held; it was empty. 


End file.
